Commentary and analysis to persuade people to become socialist and to act for themselves, organizing democratically and without leaders, to bring about a world of common ownership and free access. We are solely concerned with building a movement of socialists for socialism. We are not reformists with a programme of policies to patch up capitalism.

Wednesday, June 03, 2015

Sharing Africa or owning shares in Africa?

Despite the Ebola epidemic in West Africa and ongoing
terrorism business consistently express strong interest in African assets.
Foreign investments hit a record $80 billion in 2014, with emerging market
countries continuing to show a strong interest in African assets.

Investors from the U.S., the United Kingdom and France hold
the biggest share of African investments: $178 billion in 2012, the latest data
available. Chinese investors held nearly $28 billion in assets, a trend likely
to continue as Chinese labor gets more expensive for manufacturers; investors
from Brazil, Russia, India and South Africa also hold large portions of the
foreign-investment total.

The majority of investments flow into six African nations
that represent a third of the continent's population. The two largest
destinations for investors are South Africa and Nigeria, which have the two
largest economies.

Just as countries such as China were the low-cost producers
for many large international conglomerates in the 1980s, more once-emerging
nations are exploring setting up shop in Africa. The stubborn global recession
prompts many manufacturers to look for even lower cost producers; Ethiopia,
Kenya, Rwanda and Tanzania are all trying to attract these jobs. These
countries must of course deal with the same issues that other emerging-market
nations dealt with 30 years ago: training the workforce, establishing reliable
energy supplies and upgrading necessary infrastructure to transport manufactured
goods.